CONTROLLING HUSBAND AVOIDS JAIL AFTER ASSAULT AND COERCIVE BEHAVIOR
A paranoid husband has been spared jail after he assaulted his wife and wrongly became convinced she was having an affair, a court heard.Ryhs Jenkins pleaded guilty to assaulting her twice, causing criminal damage and using controlling or coercive behavior towards her over a four day period.
He twice put his hand around her neck, damaged her phone and went to a friend's house where she had been staying and banged on the door and left.
He also visited her mother's home and banged on the window, kicked on the door, and shouted through the letter box, before he got inside when she opened the door slightly and assaulted her.
Judge Timothy Spencer QC told 39-year-old Jenkins: "If anyone had been looking at you, let's say two years ago, in August 2017, they would have seen a man in his mid to late thirties, working and with a wife of ten years and two daughters.
"A man in employment, and to the rest of the world, this would have looked a happy family unit.
Even though you harboured a cocaine habit, which is worrying, it was probably under control a couple of years ago.
"Within that two years your world had fallen apart and it had largely fallen apart because of you.
You could have stopped it, but you seemed bent on self-destruction, and it is time that stopped." The judge said the cocaine was something that made him "increasingly paranoid about your wife" and this just turned into "obsessive controlling behaviour" and culminated in the "appalling events" in March this year.
"I'm thinking...
I'm detecting...
that led to an increase in your cocaine use?" Judge asked.
Jenkins replied from the dock "yes".
The judge imposed a total sentence of 14 months, suspended for two years, with an order to pay costs of £340.
